Джеймс Паттерсон - The Red Book

Agent Foster slides a glossy photograph out of a manila folder. It’s a close-up of the dead girl’s leg, her ankle. A tattoo of a black flower just above her anklebone. I remember seeing it the day of the shooting.

“She was branded,” says Foster.

“Do you recognize the brand?” asks Carla.

Foster shakes her head. “Never seen it before.”

“It looks like a lily,” says Rodriguez. “A black lily.”

“Martha Stewart over here,” Sosh mumbles. He throws Mat an elbow. “I gotta toughen you up. Take you to a Hawks game.”

“All we know about our Jane Doe,” I say to Foster, “is that she went by the name Evie. Honestly, we haven’t focused on her. We figured this was a gang shooting. She was collateral damage.”

Foster puts the photo back in the envelope. “You’re probably right. But we try to learn their identities. Then we can work backward, figure out where they came from, try to put together how they got smuggled here. Try to locate the source.”

“We’ll try to get her identity,” I say. “And let you know.”

“Thanks.” Foster nods. Her eyes are heavy. I have the sense she isn’t expecting much from us, that a lot of the lost girls stay lost.

Chapter 35

FRIDAY NIGHT, we put the band back together. My brothers, Brendan and Aiden, come into town. Patti and I meet them at home. By “home,” I mean the house on the South Side where we grew up, a house that is now empty in light of our mother’s death years ago and the recent incarceration of the patriarch of our family, dear old Pop.

The thing about my wrecking ball to the department—the scandal I unearthed a little over a year ago: one of the casualties was my father, the chief of detectives. He was ultimately convicted on around two dozen federal corruption charges and sentenced to life in prison. It ripped our family apart and almost destroyed Patti.

After Pop’s arrest, we didn’t know what to do with the house. Luckily, the mortgage was paid off, so we just paid the real estate taxes and hired somebody to mow the lawn. Patti dropped by in the winter to run the faucets so they wouldn’t explode.

None of us talked to Pop. We went through his lawyer. Pop agreed to sell the house and use the proceeds to pay off his lawyers. Patti found a real estate agent. We’re going to get our personal stuff out this weekend so we can put the house on the market.

We hired packers to throw everything into boxes. The price was exorbitant, but we split it four ways, so it was manageable. And well worth it. None of us wants to admit it, but it’s painful being here. The less time here, the better.

We’re grilling brats, about the only thing we’re good for, on the Weber in the backyard. The heat, the buzz of mosquitoes, the smell of charcoal and grilled meat—it’s like I’m sixteen again.

Aiden, the second oldest, a workout freak who coaches high school wrestling and runs a gym in St. Louis, nearly decapitates me with a football I didn’t see coming. That’d be something. I’ve survived a gunshot wound to the brain and took a bullet to the vest-protected ribs yesterday, and I die from a pigskin chucked at my noggin.

Brendan, the oldest, already having crossed the Rubicon of forty, presides over the grill. He got Pop’s looks more than anyone. The licks of gray at the temples and a midsection that seems to expand every time I see him only enhance that effect. He has a wife and two kids outside Dallas, where he works as a financial planner. He’s the grown-up among us, but he seems to like being here, where he can just be the brother again, drinking and belching and cussing like the rest of the Harney clan.

“So you’re, like, the hero,” says Aiden, dressed, as always, as if he’s about to pump iron, wearing a shirt two sizes too small. He gets into a crouch and wiggles his fingers at me. “C’mere. Let’s see how tough you are.”

“I would if I wasn’t wounded in the line of duty,” I say, raising up my shirt to show the bandages on my ribs. “I’d drop you like third-period French.”

“But I’m only going to use my thumb.” Aiden, doing his best Sean Connery in that movie with Meg Ryan.

“I got another idea what you can do with that thumb.”

“All right, you savages, let’s eat,” says Brendan.

“No bun for me,” Patti, the low-carb girl, announces, conveniently ignoring the fact that she’s drinking beer.

“How do you train for a marathon and not eat carbs?” Aiden asks her.

“I carbo-load for long runs.”

“I’ve got some powder you’d like.” Power lifter and bodybuilder that he is, Aiden has all kinds of supplements and enhancements, most of which smell like shit and taste even worse.

Brendan makes a face and nods at me. “Am I the only one who’s getting fat gracefully?”

“Give me time,” I say, recognizing the obvious, how much weight I’ve lost, but not for good reasons. “I’m not old as dirt like you.”

“When’s the last time you worked out, B?” Aiden asks Brendan.

“When your girlfriend came to visit last week.” Brendan dishes up the brats and buns, puts them next to the huge bowl of chips, which only he and I will touch. “She’s a wildcat, that one.”

“Our Aiden has a girlfriend?” Patti didn’t know that. Neither did I. The night just improved significantly. If Aiden has any brains, I mean any cerebral activity whatsoever, he will take the Fifth immediately, keep his lips shut so tight that the Jaws of Life couldn’t pry them apart. But he won’t, cuz he’s our Aiden.

“I’m seeing someone, yeah,” he says.

“Does she see you?” I ask. “Or do you just peep through her window and jerk off?”

“Hey, go easy on the lad.” Brendan to the rescue. “The windows at the psych ward are tough to see through.”

“Just kidding, A,” I say, sitting down. “Seriously, what’s the lucky fella’s name?”

Aiden spears a brat and drops it on his plate. “She’s a teacher at the high school.”

“What’s she teach?” Patti asks. Aiden’s gonna tell us now. He shouldn’t. He really, really shouldn’t.

“Special ed,” he says.

“Oh, you’re one of her students,” I say, low-hanging fruit. Patti likes that one, spills some beer down her chin.

Aiden raises his beer. “To Pop,” he says. “For not being exposed for the corrupt motherfucker that he was until we were grown up and out of the house.”

We clink bottles on that one, all of us except Patti, who shakes her head and frowns. It’s never going to be that simple for Patti.

“That’s fine,” says Brendan to Aiden, “but you ain’t changin’ the subject, meatball.”

It goes on like that for an hour. We slowly extract every detail of Aiden’s girlfriend’s life, devouring each nugget with any number of helpful comments. By the time we’re done, this woman has a harelip, male genitalia, a criminal record, Alzheimer’s, and a scorching case of herpes.

Good to be back with this crew. If nothing else, it takes my mind off Prince Valentine and Junior Peppers. It takes my mind off my Jane Doe on the porch, probably a victim of human trafficking, says the FBI.

Wherever she came from, however she got here, she deserves to have a proper burial, with her name on a tombstone, not a pauper’s grave.

So I decide, as I sit at the old table on our old back porch, drunk and sentimental, that I will give her that much.

I’m going to give Jane Doe a name.

Chapter 36

WALKING DOWN into the basement brings back everything from childhood, even though after we kids moved out, my parents replaced the wrestling mat with an area rug, the dartboard with artwork, the foosball table and weight bench with a love seat and couch.

We’re quiet at first down here, drunk and more emotional than any of us wants to admit, Brendan trying to break the ice with an occasional wisecrack, one or another of us turning away at times to hide the mist in our eyes. We brought a bottle of Jameson down here, and everyone’s partaking.